Madhyamaka

Nāgārjuna’s disciple Āryadeva continued his work. In the fifth to seventh centuries, Indian commentators divided over method: Buddhapālita and Candrakīrti held that a Mādhyamika should only draw out the absurd consequences of an opponent’s position, while Bhāviveka held that one could advance independent arguments of one’s own. Tibetan scholars later named these the Prāsaṅgika and Svātantrika approaches.

In the eighth century Śāntarakṣita and his disciple Kamalaśīla combined Madhyamaka with elements of Yogācāra and logic, and carried this synthesis to Tibet, where Śāntarakṣita founded the first monastery, Samye. Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra joined Madhyamaka analysis to the bodhisattva path.

In Tibet, Madhyamaka became the highest philosophical view of all schools. Tsongkhapa in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries made Candrakīrti’s Prāsaṅgika the standard for the Gelug school, and debates over how to interpret emptiness continue to divide Tibetan traditions. In China, the Sanlun (“Three Treatise”) school transmitted Madhyamaka, and its ideas shaped Chan.

In the modern period, Madhyamaka has attracted the attention of Western philosophers, who have read Nāgārjuna in comparison with Kant, Hegel, Wittgenstein and Derrida, and as a contribution to contemporary debates about metaphysics and logic.